Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.90.950513134444.29588K-100000@nywork2.undp.org> Date: Sat, 13 May 1995 13:45:05 -0400 From: Mike Gurstein <mailto:mikeg@NYWORK2.UNDP.ORG> Subject: Ebola (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 May 95 10:12:23 -0700 From: Tomas Andersson mailto:@GOO <andersson.tomas@a1stkai1.stkmts.soo.mts.dec.com> To: mailto:Extropians@extropy.org Subject: EbolaDeadly virus is identified in outbreak in Zaire (c) Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co. New York Times
Scientists have found preliminary evidence that the Ebola virus, one of the deadliest infectious agents known, is the cause of a mysterious disease that has broken out in Zaire, officials of the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday night.
The disease has killed at least 59 people in Zaire, and health officials fear that panic may be aggravating the situation there. Perhaps as many as 300 patients, doctors, nurses and other health care workers have fled hospitals in the affected areas, said Dr. Ralph H. Henderson, an assistant director general of WHO, a U.N. agency in Geneva.
It is not known how many of those fleeing may be infected with the virus.
An announcement of the preliminary laboratory findings, which were made at the Centers for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta, is to be made in Zaire on Thursday morning, said Dr. James M. Hughes, an official of the federal agency.
Ebola is one of a family of viruses that cause high fever and severe bleeding, and it is one of the new and emerging infectious agents that leading experts have warned could cause outbreaks unexpectedly anywhere in the world.
The Ebola virus was discovered in Zaire in 1976, where it killed 90 percent of the nearly 600 people who were infected there, and in the Sudan. It caused another outbreak in the Sudan in 1979, again killing 90 percent of the victims. There is no specific treatment or vaccine to prevent it, although general hygienic and medical precautions can help curtail its spread.
Of great concern among experts is that health care systems throughout the world are unprepared to detect such outbreaks, to care for those made ill, or to deal with panic of the sort that seems to have occurred in Zaire.
Concerns about such outbreaks, initially raised by infectious disease experts and public health officials, have been popularized by books that are now on the best-seller list and movies that are among the top box-office attractions.
Some recently discovered viruses, like those that cause Lassa fever and Marburg disease, are believed to have been responsible for the outbreak of disease in Africa for many years.
But the viruses were detected only after infected people were treated in the United States and Germany. The Marburg virus, for example, was discovered among Germans who died after they handled monkeys imported from Africa.
Jet airplanes have increased the threat of spread of such infections because people incubating a deadly virus can travel from an infected area to another area of the world before becoming ill.
Yet for all the concern, there has been little, if any, spread of such diseases in developed countries. A major reason for the spread in poorer countries appears to be that hospitals often lack adequate supplies of needles and syringes, making their reuse necessary.
In addition, doctors and nurses may not always obey two cardinal principles of medicine: washing their hands and using antiseptic techniques, because clean water is not always available.
Federal and international health officials said the risk of the spread of the Ebola virus outside of Zaire from the current outbreak was very small. Nevertheless, they are alerting quarantine inspectors at major airports to check for signs of illness among travelers from Zaire.
Health officials also want to alert doctors to consider the possibility of a hemorrhagic fever in any patient who has fever and bleeding, said Dr. James M. Hughes, an official of the Centers for Disease Control.
The incubation period for the Ebola virus ranges from two to 21 days.
The new Ebola outbreak was centered in the city of Kikwit, 250 miles east of Kinshasa, Zaire's capital. But Ebola apparently has spread to another area from Kikwit, said Henderson of WHO.
One of the principal tasks of teams of scientists entering the area will be to calm panic, Henderson said. Information about those who have fled hospitals came from WHO sources in Zaire and was "fragmentary," he said.
"It will be a challenge to find those who fled and we have to insure that those who have been in contact with infected people get as good care as possible," Henderson said.
All but 20 or so patients left the hospitals, he said, and they were so sick that they could not flee.
On Tuesday, Dr. James W. LeDuc, a WHO official, said that the Ebola outbreak had spread from Kikwit to another unidentified part of Zaire.
During an outbreak of Ebola in the late 1970s patients also fled the area but there was only one transmission of the virus outside of the infected area. That case involved a nurse who treated a patient who went to Kinshasa for care, said Dr. Peter Piot, who was a member of the team that investigated that outbreak and who is now an official of WHO.
"From the information we have so far, it seems like a repeat story of what happened in Zaire in the late 1970s," Henderson said. The virus is named for the area of Zaire in which it was first detected.
"The potential for spread outside of Zaire is very small indeed," Henderson said. "You have to work very hard to get the disease. It's not like measles or influenza."